Have A Quick Bite
by Half-real
Summary: Ninth Doctor and Rose enjoy a night on the town. Updated, still incomplete.
1. A Quick Bite

Characters are not mine, and all that cal.

Enjoy, I hope.

Strobe lights flickered wildly, revealing the throng of dancing bodies in the club, gyrating fervently to the pounding bass being driven through an inadequate sound system. He never really did understand the appeal of dance music to humans, but for the moment he could put up with the discomfort on his ears. Leaning his elbows on the table and dropping his chin into his hands, he glanced over to the left and spotted Rose half dancing, half barging her way through the crowd, carrying two drinks. An overeager drunk staggered towards her, arms held wide for a hug, and was quickly met by a knee in the groin and a flashed smile. The Doctor grinned. He always did pick companions with a bit of zest.

She turned back towards him, and nearly tripped over someone who had clearly had too much and was sitting dazedly on the floor. Catching her balance, she almost collided with an antique grandfather clock- an odd touch for a club like this, but you never could tell with humans. Blushing a little, Rose straightened and kept walking, finally reaching the table and putting his drink in front of him. He smiled in thanks and raised it to his lips, sipping gently. His eyebrow raised.

"Vodka?" he asked as she flopped down next to him. "I could have sworn I asked for water."

"In a place like this? Good luck." She flashed another dazzling grin. "Besides, you need to branch out a bit, be a bit more adventurous."

"What, me? More adventurous? I'd have some trouble there."

"You know what I mean," she said, sipping her own drink. "Ranging through time and space for however many years, fighting things I couldn't even imagine, and you still want water in a nightclub." She giggled.

"Different metabolism, remember? Too much alcohol and I get heartburn. In both hearts."

"You've got two hearts?" A look of disbelief crossed her face. "Come on, you expect me to believe that?"

"I'm serious. Here, check yourself." Grinning, he tilted his head on one side, letting her place fingers against the side of his neck, finding the pulse. The rhythm was unmistakeable; _beat-beat … beat-beat_. He couldn't be faking the strange time signature- two hearts were definitely pumping the blood around his body. He chuckled at the startled look on her face.

"So what, you never thought about mentioning that?" she managed to get out through her amazement.

"It never seemed particularly important," he said, shrugging. "I thought you'd be expecting weird things like that by now. You've done a fair bit of ranging through time and space yourself."

"I'm not sure I'll ever get used to travelling with you," she laughed. "About the only thing I am sure of with you is that my life won't get boring anytime soon." She finished her drink and brought it down on the table with a flourish. "More?"

"Not if it's going to be more alcohol," the Doctor replied, to receive a shrug from Rose.

"Fair enough. I'm not that thirsty anyway." She lifted her legs up onto the cushions of the booth and leaned into the Doctor's shoulder, wriggling to get comfortable against the leather jacket. The Time Lord cast a puzzled glance down at his companion, giving way quickly to an acquiescent smile, and again the thought ran across his mind. You never could tell with humans- particularly human women.

They sat there, not speaking, for a few minutes, watching the dancers thrash around the floor, the very picture of inelegance to the Doctor's eyes. Exhausted couples cast envious glances at the booth, but his boyish smile said plainly; we're not moving. Eventually, Rose piped up again.

"So why are we here?"

"Don't give me that, it was your idea in the first place." Rose hadn't exactly been thrilled with the extent of the TARDIS wardrobe. Fine, if you happened to be male, or auditioning for a period drama, but too little to suit her tastes. She had demanded they go shopping, and London had seemed as good a place as any. Secretly, the Doctor suspected the TARDIS had rather a lot more in its wardrobe than it was letting on. It was a playful thing, prone to rearranging rooms and corridors from day to day. It couldn't very well fool him, but it got his human companions every time. Still, even if that was the case, a little shopping trip couldn't do Rose any harm.

She hit his arm playfully. "I know about the shopping, I mean why are we _here_? In this nightclub? You don't usually take me to places like this."

His perpetual grin widened. "You're making it sound like a date." This earned him another punch on the arm. "But anyway, while you were charging half of the contents of London's clothing stores to the TARDIS credit card, I thought I'd have a bit of a nose around, see if I could rustle up an adventure. I think I might have something." His eyes, which had been surveying the packed room for some time, alighted on something. "Ah, here we go."

Rose sat up and peered in the direction he was looking, a smile playing on her features. "This should be good. What am I looking for, exactly?"

"Right in the middle of the dance floor." He gestured, and Rose focused on the couple he was indicating. The man was tall and angular, a ponytail running down his back over a sharp black shirt. He had his arms wrapped around the girl, who looked to be several years his younger, and was kissing her furiously. Rose giggled unbelievingly.

"That's it? We're here to spy on young lovers?"

"Oh come on," the Doctor said dryly. "I've taught you better than that, surely. Look closer."

Rose did. The girl's hands hung limply at her side, fingers brushing the bottom of her obscenely short skirt, and she certainly didn't seem to be enjoying the experience. Also, on closer glance he wasn't kissing her mouth, but her neck. Or was it a kiss? A tiny trail of red ran across the expanse of cleavage she had on show. The colour drained from Rose's face as she realised the gaunt man had his teeth in the girl's neck.

"So this is your idea of a fun night out?" she asked, shakily.

The Doctor couldn't help the grin. "Yup. Vampires."


	2. Vampires 101

"Okay, we're on," the Doctor said, taking Rose's hand and pulling her to her feet. On the dance floor, the man- vampire, Rose thought reluctantly- had apparently finished his snack and was leading the girl towards the back of the club. The Doctor began a haphazard charge through the throng, drawing more than a few outraged and startled exclamations from the patrons. Rose, holding tightly to his hand, followed closely behind.

As they barged their way past the dancing couples, a hand descended on the Doctor's shoulder, turning him about. On the other end of the intervening arm was a burly, red faced man with an expression of displeasure prominent on his features.

"Hey, buddy, why don't we show a little courtesy here?" he asked in gruff tones, tightening his grip on the Doctor. The Time Lord sighed deeply, then raised his head to stare the man directly in the eye.

"Right at the moment, I don't have the time," he said, taking a firm hold of the man's wrist. He made a complicated motion with his hand, and with very little fuss the man was spinning through the air, to land with a thud on his back. Someone screamed, but the Doctor was already off again. Rose leaned forward and hissed in his ear.

"What the hell was that?"

"A martial art I picked up from the Venusians a few hundred years ago. I'm one of the only people with two arms who can use if effectively." Rose shot an askance glance at him. She was never sure if he was being serious or not.

"Oh right, okay, so you've been to Venus as well then?" she asked, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

"Well, why not? It's not nearly as unpleasant as your scientists make it out to be. Lovely people, the Venusians." Rose shut up.

As they reached the back of the club, the Doctor was apparently trying to look in every direction at once. There was no sign of their quarry, and the Doctor cursed under his breath. Rose tapped his shoulder.

"Door?" she suggested, indicating a sturdy wooden door recessed into the wall a short distance away.

"Ah. Yes," the Doctor said. "I was just coming to that." They approached the door and he turned the handle. Locked. The Doctor fished into his pocket and produced the sonic screwdriver, which whined faintly as he thrust it into the keyhole. After a few seconds there was a click and the door swung open. The Doctor grinned at Rose and pulled her through behind him.

They emerged into a thoroughly damp alleyway behind the club, cluttered with rubbish. Their vampire was still nowhere to be seen. Running to the mouth of the alley, the Doctor stuck his head out and peered in both directions. Turning back to Rose, he shook his head.

"Damn," he said, simply.

* * *

"So, remind me again why we _want _to go looking for vampires?" They were back in the TARDIS, in a sitting room Rose was confident hadn't been there the day before. The Doctor was rummaging in an old fashioned chest. His voice reached her slightly muffled by the wood of the container.

"Because they shouldn't be here."

"Well, that's a bit of a given, isn't it? They're vampires."

The Doctor sat up. "No, you don't understand. Back before the … unpleasantness of the Time War, my people fought a huge war with the Great Vampires, and eventually managed to defeat them. Mopping up their descendents was something of a priority after that."

"Oh, and of course you lot were infallible. Couldn't you have missed a few?"

"I don't think so. My people were very, what's the word… enthusiastic about it."

"How'd you mean?"

"They tended to go in for time looping entire planets, or sometimes just erasing the planets from the timeline entirely, to stop the spread of the Vampiric curse. Erring on the side of genocide, you might say."

Rose covered her mouth. "That's horrible."

"I know." The Doctor sighed. "I managed to get rid of the last of them in San Francisco some time ago, although obviously without resorting to such extreme measures. Or at least, I thought they were the last." He thought back to those events. Temporally speaking, they had occurred less than a decade from where he sat, but to him they were a lifetime ago. Then, he'd had rather a lot more hair and wide eyed innocence. He'd been so sure there couldn't be anymore…

"Well, it looks like you were wrong. So, are you going to give me Vampires 101?" she asked, half smiling at the absurdity of the comment.

"That's a good point. Well, a lot of what legend says is actually true. They drink blood, they're vulnerable to sunlight, and they can't stand the allyl component of garlic."

"What about stakes through the heart?"

"Can't stand those either. They have a fairly incredible cardiovascular system, can heal most wounds almost instantly, so you need to be fairly extreme. Hard to heal a wound with a large bit of wood in your heart." He paused, thinking. "Oh, and decapitation works too."

"Oh, that is cheery. 'Hi, you're a vampire, here's my cunningly concealed axe', kind of thing?"

"No, no, I want to try and avoid violence for now. We'll go back tonight and see what we can turn up." He turned back to rummaging through the chest.

Rose blanched. "So I don't get any protection at all?"

"You've got me." He watched the unamused look on her face. "Oh, all right then. Ah, found it!" He pulled something out of the chest and brandished it in the air. The look on Rose's face didn't change as she stared at him.

"No? Okay then," he shrugged, tossing the garlic necklace back into the box. "Here you go then." He tossed her a length of wood, nearly a foot long, sharpened at one end. She smiled.

"I'm touched. My very own stake. No one's ever given me one before…"

* * *

They stood in the queue outside the club, Rose shivering with the cold. Slowly the line advanced to where red light spilled out into the dark from the open door. As the bouncer waved them past, the Doctor gave her hand a squeeze.

"Okay, we're on."


End file.
